Surprise, Surprise: Men and Women View Web Sites Differently

Love this, Tara. Thanks.

If we compare ESPN.com and iVillage - The Internet for Women: Discussing Women’s Issues those preferences seem to show up.

I think that men and women do view websites differently. I tend to get straight to the point while my boyfriend enjoys clicking around on different links.

I have never really paid attention to who designs a web page so I can’t say whether I prefer web pages designed by men or by women. However, I’m quit sure that the ESPN website was designed by a male. Their webpage is very busy with a million different links and pictures. I personally do not like their website because there is just too much on the page. I enjoy simple things.

Guys love the ESPN website. Many of my guy friends live on the ESPN site because there is just so much information there. Also, the ESPN website has small colorful sections while the overall back ground is a grey or neutral color. So, as the research showed guys do like websites designed by guys.

Like I said earlier, I’m not sure how to find who designs websites so I can’t really talk about a website designed by a woman. I have noticed that Auburn University changed its webpage from a white background to a dark blue. I don’t like the dark blue as much because it seems dull and uninviting.

Personally, I do enjoy looking at websites that are filled with bright colors, not too many links, and just a few pictures. I think more research does need to be done on these particular findings.

As far as companies designing two different websites, one that appeals to men and one that appeals to women, I think that is a bit ridiculous. Companies could just design one site that appeals to women at one level and men at another. They could make it easy to access for women but they have color appeal for men.

There are some companies that appeal more to women or men in the first place so their websites should target that particular audience. For example, a women’s clothing line website should have a page that appeals to women because that’s who’s visiting the site.

More research could be done so web pages could be designed that appeal to specific age groups or ethnicities. Webpage designers could create a wide variety of sites that appeal to every type of target audience, but the company should decide who their major audience is.

Overall, I think this type of research could be extremely beneficial to companies around the world.

I agree with the notion that it’s no suprise that men and women view websites differently. Men and women communicate differently (with reference to Deborah Tannen’s Genderlect Styles theory, which says that the two genders are essentially speaking different languages!) AND process information differently. Also, Tannen notes that men and women generally utilize communication differently. So yes, it makes sense that men and women have different criteria for what they consider a “good” website to be.

However, I would agree that more research is needed with regard to the two extremes. A lot of people (if not most) would have preferences that fall into both categories. Personally, when evaluating a website and how it appeals to me, I take the content and purpose into account. For example, for a news website, I want something sharp-looking, efficient to navigate, with lots of links and special features. I wouldn’t want something flowery and “pretty” — that is what I would expect from Martha Stewart’s site. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I prefer one over the other.

I wonder if women are more versatile in their website preferences. How many men do you know wouldn’t feel a little awkward admitting they like a design that’s been dubbed “feminine”? It seems to be more acceptable for women to have masculine preferences.

(By the way) I, too, noticed Auburn’s updated website — I rather like it. I think it comes across as more modern and cutting-edge. This, of course, is important as increasing levels of technology are creeping into every industry. A university needs to show upfront that they’re keepig up with the fast-paced times.

On another note, I have been webmaster of my sorority’s website for the past four years. (www.auburn.edu/gpb — target audience: young women, of course!) I have received positive feedback from both men and women regarding the site, but it would be fun to make it the subject of more rigorous (and objective) testing to determine how the visual design is perceived. (Hmm …)

I had a field day with The Gender Genie! I was laughingly offended by being pronounced “one butch chick” and thought it rather obnoxious when it declared, “I knew I was right,” when it finally pegged me as female. (After marking me as a “male” 18 out of 20 times I submitted text.)

Also interesting: I submitted text (that I’d written, of course) from the sorority site — it was promptly dubbed “male.” AND, I had a male friend submit some pieces for evaluation. One of his even came back with a “female” result!

My conclusion is simply this: in each of us, we house masculine and feminine tendencies. It’s important for most organizations to design one site that has elements of both genders, but that also embodies the personality of the organization.

I believe that men and women view websites differently. I for one, however, have never paid any attention to whether or not a male or female has produced the site. I believe for the most part you can tell by the design of the website whether it was produced by a male or female. For me, it is all about how easy it is to find the information I am looking for on the website. If I have to click on numerous links to find what I am looking for I will lose interest immediately. So I guess I prefer to have a page with many links on the home page of that website so I can find what I am looking for rather quickly.

I am a huge sports fan. My homepage is the Chicago Cubs website. If you look at that site you can see what I am talking about. The homepage is very busy with many links. For me, as I stated before, the “surfing” becomes a lot easier.

I feel like an organization must adapt a website to appeal to both a male and a female. I am graduating in the spring and many seniors across the country are stressing out about finding a job and becoming a part of the business world. I can say that many seniors and prospective job seekers look at a companies website first to see if what this company has to offer is attractive.

The website is, in my opinion, a huge determining factor in finding a job. If the organization doesn’t appeal to men and women, then the best potential candidate might look for a different career path.

There are also websites that should appeal more to women and not men and vice versa. Like what one of the previous posts said that a woman’s clothing line website should appeal to the women. I agree with that only part of the way. The website will not know when a husband or boyfriend is looking for a gift to give to his girlfriend, therefore, I still feel the website should be targeted mostly toward the woman, but in this instance the best potential customers could be the man.

Above all, I believe men and women do look at a website differently. The website a company creates must in my opinion be targeted towards both genders in order to be successful.

I found this study by Glomorgan Univeristy interesting and beneficial to organizations. I agree that men and women view websites differently and are attracted to different aspects of a website. I haven’t put much thought into whether a website is more effective based on its appearance until now. After researching this topic I realized that I subconsciously pay more attention to websites that are appealing to me (a woman), and I do not visit ones that are directed at men.

The gender of the person designing a particular web page has never been an issue to me. However, I have been to certain websites, and will continue to visit them, because of their color, design, wording, pictures and content. I think the topic of your search has a lot to do with what you want out of a website, and of course that will vary from male to female.

Auburn has changed their homepage, and it is more appealing to both sexes. I don’t think the homepage has changed since I started school at Auburn, and I think it will attract more attention from male and female potential students, current students and faculty.

I am a big sports fan and enjoy reading about the latest, but I become overwhelmed when I start searching for something on ESPN’s website. It is obvious that the site is aimed at men because of the many links, colors, lines and information. Some women would like to read the current sports news, and it would be nice if ESPN had a more diverse or woman-friendly website. The same goes for men who visit sites aimed at women.

An organization should not have two websites to focus attention to each gender. I think that would be a waste of time and money. I do admit that I don’t pay a lot of attention to a company’s website if it looks masculine because it can be intimidating or frustrating at times. There should be a balance between sexes within an organization, and it should show in the design and appeal of its website.

Overall, I believe that an organization will profit from designing a website that is user-friendly for both sexes. Every website cannot completely appeal to both genders, but understanding what men and women are looking for in a website will help a company succeed.

Growing up with two older brothers, I’ve learned a lot about guys preferences. With this knowledge, I agree with Glamorgan University Business School when they stated the appearance of sites play a role in whether men or women will visit it. Being a girl who likes, “girly things� such as flowers, the color pink, cute pictures etc., I understand how studies have shown that women prefer websites made by other women, because we have things in common. Almost like a friendship, women with similarities may enjoy the look of a website.

In a communications class I took last fall, I learned a lot about colors. Men, it seems, often show more interest to something if they see colors they like, just like women. Men’s colors can often be dark, such as black, deep reds, blues etc., like Glamorgan University’s research shows. Although espn.com has been used as examples in people’s comments, this is the best example I could think of as well. The website’s main colors are red, black, grey etc. I can see how this “look� appeals to men, because these are colors that men are often associated with.

To test this “theoryâ€? on women’s websites I picked a wedding website, theknot.com. The first color I saw was light blue, then purple, and blue flowers around the pictures of pretty women in wedding dresses with huge rocks on their left hand. This is a prime example of a website that, based on appearance alone, will attract the average lady…myself included.

I agree that men and women view websites differently. I do feel that most of us do it subconsciously. Before reading this article I had never really thought about which websites appealed to me more and which ones appeal more to males. However, after I read the article I began looking at a variety of websites and found the websites formatted for women appealed to me more.

The sites for women had background pictures, more famine fonts and colors and sites like the Sex in the City page show informal pictures of the stars. WebPages formatted more for males used dark colors. Most boys paint or decorate their rooms with either a dark green or blue, which shows that naturally these colors appeal to them. Examples of websites that are focused on appealing to the male gender are GameSpot and Party Poker.

The web pages that are used equally by men and women such as Ebay and national news pages seem to use a combination of the formants that appeal to both genders. However, most websites seem to be more formatted to the gender of the majority of the users.

I also agree with the ratings that men favor website designed by men and females favor websites designed by females. I agree with this because a female is going to format her website according to what would appeal to her and a male would format a site that appeal to him. All in all I feel this was an interesting article and that there should be more research done to help website designers enhance their websites..

I completely agree with the idea that men and women view websites differently. However, I think the reason the two sexes are attracted to different styles of websites has to do with the way they process information differently; not merely what they find pleasing to the eye.

A male directed website, like the ESPN sight, has many rows of links to information. The links are setup on the left in rows and the big stories are arranged like days on a calendar with pictures and sub-headings as far as you can scroll. It’s a terrific example of how the male mind gets straight to business; it’s a “one track mind� of finding information.

To sell a product, or to gain interest, websites for men use scantily clad women (one track mind, like I said.) Men, unlike women, enjoy an eye catching experience. If this weren’t true then men would have to wear more lingerie to get a woman’s attention. Perhaps this is why atop every story on the ESPN website there is a picture of its contents, so men can get to where they want with as little time wasted as possible. Men are razzle dazzled for their attention.

Women’s websites seem to be designed much around their thought processes as well. Their websites, like iVilliage.com, seem to have fewer pictures and more words. They are arranged in a constant flow of what the average woman thinks of.

For most women, busy websites and male dominated websites are intimidating. I have been on the ESPN website before, but each time I leave feeling a little overwhelmed and a bit out of place. I don’t feel like being slammed with flashing words and jumbles of pictures, I have enough going on in my head throughout the day.

It seems that women are more attracted to “pretty� things. I think if this were not so, men would have more floral bedspreads with matching bed skirts. Not to say that all women are more attracted to something “pretty,� but it seems that the simple web design is more geared toward the masses of women. Websites like iVillage have a pastels and pink theme because it’s a simple design and more pleasing to women. I find men who play on websites geared toward women tend to simply get bored.

I think the notion of companies designing websites to fit the sexes is key; not only to maintain interest, but actually sell a product. I think that products that are geared toward a specific sex should have a website to match. However, I agree that it would be nice to have a site that is primarily geared toward men, like ESPN, to have a sister sight (no pun intended) that is geared toward women. I think websites intended for the use both sexes should simply invest more time in to attention to the needs and thought process of both men and women.

Not surprisingly, I agree that men and women do view everything differently. I haven’t though, until today, thought about how differently we view websites. I think this idea is very important to people with a heavily trafficked site, and if the site is too female or male, you could loose audiences quickly.

Now many sites would prefer to cater to one sex or another, theknot.com as mentioned above, davidsbridal.com, or marthastewartliving.com deals primarily with women. However, espn.com is a very male site and I know several women that go there to keep updated with football and such.

I clicked around after reading the article about women and men viewing sites differently, and found that I prefer probably the more masculine site of straight lines and symetry, but I do not enjoy espn’s site. I feel like it is very overwhelming and too much work to go there to find out some information. I also like the informal pictures as opposed to posed photographs, and to me that runs strong throughout women’s sites.

However, I also felt like many women’s websites contained all the lines and symetry to them also. Davidsbridal.com seemed just as simple as http://www.rockcrawlers4×4.com/index a site my boyfriend visits daily.
All in all I don’t think we should have two different sites for females and males. A combination of the two preferences seems to be just as pleasing to me.

As one last statement, I’m not a fan of Auburn’s new website. I think its the dark colors that turn me away from it, but then again that’s my female side coming out…

As most of the comments to this blog mentioned, readers didn’t realize their preferences in web design and creation. However, I believe that these preferences are obvious, but very much on the subconscious level; readers won’t consciously realize his or her preferences until this type of research is pointed out to them.

Though this very interesting research, I am not at all surprised by the research findings. It seems like an obvious answer that women web designers would better appeal to women readers, mainly because the female designer is going to create a page that she, too, feels is attractive. The same applies to male designers.

As for Auburn University’s website, it seems universally appealing, but more masculine than feminine. According to the research, the dark colors and use of straight lines would be more appealing to males than females, which is somewhat surprising because the female population at Auburn is higher than the male population.

If anyone finds this research obvious or not, we still need to be reminded of the results and keep in mind these results as we design our websites.

I also agree that men and women veiw websites differently but i think it is done subconsciously. After looking through my favorite websites, they tend to be more feminine. I have not noticed though that if those webisites were designed by women.

Auburn University’s website, for an example, is appealing to both men and women. Yes, it may be using dark colors, but the colors are the obviously the school colors.

I do not think websites should have two different faces. I think websites should indulge in a combination of both feminine and masculine aesthetics. More masculine websites could draw more viewers and vice versa. I think it would be very beneficial for websites to attract both sexes.

This was very interesting and yes, more research is needed. I know now i will find myself looking at a website and seeing what sex designed it and see if this study is true to me.

I’m impressed to see that so many people have opinions about this subject. Personally, it’s something I haven’t really thought about. But it has been very interesting reading your comments and I have actually started looking a little closer at the websites I visit on a regular basis.

I agree that men and women view websites differently, but, like Sara, I haven’t really paid close attention to who designs the website that I am viewing. Male or female, it really doesn’t make much difference to me.

I think it is wrong to say that men and women have one preference or the other when it comes to the appeal of a webite. For instance, I disagree with the finding that “Women seemed to like pages with more color in the background and typeface.” I find that PotteryBarn.com is very appealing, even though the webmaster uses white as a background and simple shades of gray and red as accents. It is very simplistic and clean cut. But, this is what I would expect from a company like Pottery Barn. I would be disappointed if ESPN used the same format. Sure, ESPN’s website is flashy, but if you enjoy sports, the bright colors and flashy pictures are part of the ambiance. I think the style and appeal of a website depends on the message being sent.

Personally, I am usually drawn to the functionality of the website, as well as the extent of the information provided. For me, these are the most attractive aspects. If a website is well organized, informative and easy to maneuver through, then I am generally satisfied.

I, like Josh, feel that an organization’s website can be responsible for the attractiveness of a company, to both potential clients and info-seekers. If I can’t find the information that I’m looking for, it is disappointing and I feel that it reflects poorly on the company. The Internet is becoming such a vital part of business relations, that you don’t want your website to be the reason someone chooses another direction. These days, your website may be the only “face” a potential client sees, so it is important to be as efficient and functional as possible.

The above mentioned research is interesting and gives us insight into the profiling of our audiences in online communications. In my opinion, the study does a great job of illustrating the differences between the sexes in terms of their browsing patterns.

A close parallel to these browsing patterns can be seen by examining the in-store shopping patterns of men versus women. Take a typical department store for example. On any given Saturday, I’m sure that after a short period of observation, a few conclusions would be made in regard to this idea.

Most men enter their local department store with a mission (i.e. “I need a new suit, pair of tennis shoes, tie, etc.”), whereas a woman may be more likely to begin the trip with less of a specific plan in mind. Even the departments within the department store are laid out in a manner thay suppports the research in question.

The departments designed to attract women have more of an informal look and feel to them, while the men’s department is typically set up to make it extremely easy for the shopper to find what he is looking for in a sectioned off and categorized area.

It seems to not be too far of a stretch to correlate the idea of shopping preferences between men and women with the ideas outlined in the Glamorgan study. I think that this association can give us insight not only into internet and purchase patterns of a particular target audience, but also into the perceptions of the groups as a whole. This information can of course be extremely beneficial in planning how to appeal to the audience in varied aspects of a PR campaign.

I’m very limited in my knowledge of psychology, but it doesn’t surprise me at all that men and women perceive things differently. However, in my opinion I don’t feel there is a need for masculine and feminine versions of websites. I think that making gender specific versions of websites would be a lot of trouble and produce little result.

After reading this article, the first thing that came to my mind is the foreign language class I’ve taken. In the Spanish language nouns are either masculine or feminine… there is no in between. Similarly, I think that because men and women are different both psychologically and physically, most products, services and even websites are directed toward either men or women with little in between.

In Marketing Strategy, I learned that the goal of advertising is identifying and communicating with a specific target audience. It would be unreasonable to assume that any one strategy, or website, is going to reach and affect every single person in that market. Instead the goal is to reach the target audience, not necessarily the “most” audience.

For example, the outdoorchannel.com doesn’t really have a need for a women’s version of their web page because the channel and website’s goal is to reach the most outdoorsmen. Similarly, brides.com doesn’t need a men’s version of their website because it caters to brides… women.

I think that as long as the web site is able to communicate with and appeals to the largest amount of it’s target audience, then the goal has been realized.

Furthermore, I think there should be more research done on the gender favoring the same gender’s designed website. For instance, according to the study, as a female I should favor websites designed by women, but what if a homosexual man designed a website, would I not be prone to favor that website too?

I was surprised that men and women view websites differently. I guess I never thought about it hard enough. After reading the article, I can understand why because women and men view things differently all the time, why not a website?

It does confuse me that research shows that women tend to like to look at webpages made by women and men like to look at webpages made by men. How do I know who made the website? But at the same time, it does make sense that a woman would know what other women want to see and a man would know what men like to see on a website.

When I had to do research on the new Dove Real Beauty Campaign I was extremely caught up in my research because I loved the website. The colors are soft blue and pink. The website was easy to navigate and it was geared to attract women. I don’t think my guy friends would have too much fun surfing through the Dove website, at least not as much as I did. At the same time, I really don’t pay that much attention to a website unless it is user-friendly and I have fun on the website. If a website has too much information and looks cluttered I am bothered by it because I don’t know where to start reading. I don’t know who designed the Dove website but they surely got my attention.

So I think if a company is targeting women/men they should appeal to what women/men want in a website in order to capture their audience and keep them coming back to visit. If the company has a combined target audience then I guess they make it work for both parties.

I am not at all surprised by the findings that men and women prefer websites designed for them. A long time ago, in a Marketing class far, far away…I read that the way to target men in advertising is to use black and white/muted colors.

Their preference, along with our girlie preferences may also be led by principles of psychology, not just rods and cones. Women are notorious gossips/nesters/emotional. Because of our “need” for comfort and stories, websites like iVillage (ivillage.com) give women Cosmo-esque articles about issues females find appealing. This is a definite female website.

Josh commented on his enjoyment of typically male websites. His blog names the Chicago Cubs website as one of his most viewed. I looked at the site, and it follows what the article claims to be the male model: only two major colors, bold horizontal lines and moving links…plus nifty gadgets to track scores and game playback.

I see all this, and I start to wonder- Are we forgetting content? The AP piece quoted Gloria Moss as saying there needs to be more research on whether to tailor websites to target women and men. More than aesthetics need to be considered…the Glamorgan study said that male and female students designed the websites that were the test group, but did not state if the content was the same on each site. If the content was not consistent, it would be easy to see why women picked female sited and guys the male ones.

The comparison of iVillage to ESPN also follows this line of reasoning. If I were a female sports nut, I would value the sports website more than some frilly Betty Homemaker site (not to be sexist). Advertisers and marketers have spent years aligning products to target audiences. The maleness/femaleness of a website can ultimately be found in the page’s advertising. If you look at ESPN, you will see banners for luxury cars, cell phones and sports equipment. iVillage boasts ads for low-fat breakfast bars, diaper ointment and the like.

I definitely agree with the finding that men and women like different types of websites. For example, although I am an avid fan of college football, I do not like to go on the ESPN website because it is too busy. I like when things are to the point and direct. My guy friends, on the other hand, can spend hours on that website.

What I find the most interesting about the findings is what the information says about the personalities of men and women. I have not studied gender differences in school so I do not know the theories that are out there. However, I relate the difference in website preferences to the differences I have with my friends on video games. My best guy friends love fancy new video games. When I head over to their houses, they are playing the games through the internet on projector sized screens to get the ultimate effect. I, on the other hand, and most of my female friends, enjoy playing the Super Nintendo games. These video games have mediocre graphics but, are direct and to the point.

This article also reminded me of a project I did this summer at my internship. I and my fellow intern, whom is also a girl, were in charge of analyzing various clients’ websites and giving suggestions on how they could improve their sites for their audiences. Looking back, I wonder whether our opinions were biased as we did not represent the opinions of the male gender. Furthermore, there was one website that I really disliked. Its color theme was deep red with white text and it contained a lot of long paragraphs. Although the information states that women tend to like more color, I feel that maybe the statement that men prefer darker tones and straight lines was more accurate in this situation. I remember looking at this website for hours on end thinking, what is the exact reason that I just do not like this red background? Additionally, as a woman, I feel that I fall perfectly into the stereotype of wanting things to be brief concise, and my time on the site to be limited. As I ended up writing in my analysis, the long paragraphs bothered me. I thought that the information should be bulleted and easy to read so that the website surfer could get what they needed and get out.

This study was very interesting and got me thinking. Do I prefer the typical female website layout? Generally yes, is my answer. I do prefer color and more candid rather than posed pictures. I believe, however, that attraction to a website varies from person to person and situation to situation.

During my research to find public relations firms for my potential internship and possibly my first job, I was attracted to different things on different websites. I liked the color and creativity of the sites which is typical of women. I also liked the clean lines and simplicity of the websites which is typically male. It wasn’t strictly female websites or strictly male sites I like but rather a combination of both.

Website designers need always to keep in mind their audience when designing their sites. Poor design can turn a potential employee, client, or simple browser away within seconds. This goes back to the fundamental rule of public relations and marketing which is, know your audience. It is necessary for typically male companies to add mostly male components, however, they should also add female components to draw in female browsers. The same should be done for typically female companies.

When website designers come up with a balance for male and female website designs, they could attract potentially double their viewing status. It makes sense that websites such as ESPN or the Maxim magazine website have more male design qualities and websites such as iVillage and Bluefly (a shopping website) have more female design qualities. It would do those websites good, however, if they added components of the opposite sexes liking.

In the AP article, the author noted that the students also researched British university websites, and found that 94% favored masculine appeal, while only two percent leaned towards feminine appeal. I decided to research some U.S. universities to see if the same was true, and here’s what I found.

Out of the ten websites I visited, 80% seemed to favor a more masculine approach, with the straight, horizontal lines and stationary, solid objects. These were Williams College, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, University of Washington and Duke.

Only two percent favored the feminine approach, with more color, attractive typeface and informal pictures. These were Smith College and Cornell University. And in case you didn’t know, Smith is a women’s college. So does that even count?

Obviously, a lot more research needs to be done to really determine if the U.S. favors masculine or feminine websites. But even with this small sample it’s clear that most of the Ivy League schools favor masculinity in their websites. Is this because their target audience is men, or simply because a man created the site? Or maybe they are trying to recruit more male applicants? Very interesting.

It seems obvious to me that men and women would surf the internet differently considering we are different in so many other ways. However, I never stopped to consider it could be the appearance rather than the content of a website that appeal to me versus what would appeal to a guy. I also never noticed whether a website was made by a male or female and if that affected my taste for a particular website.

I , being a girl, like bright colors and text. (I agree that the new Auburn Website is too dark!) I wanted to test this theory on myself to see if the “style and design” of a website would influence my feelings toward it.

I recently watched car racing for the first time. Not awful, not my favorite, but I know a lot of people (mostly guys) who check Nascar.com to see driver standings, etc. I went to the website and there was so much crammed on the first page that I couldn’t even read it. Nothing jumped out at me. It was just a bunch of columns and boxes. It had dark colors and straight lines, like the study said a website a man would prefer would have.

I then went to the girliest website I could think of, Lilypulitzer.com, a women and girl’s clothing company. Right away it was colorful with hot pink writing and colorful pictures. It was clean, pretty and organized. Not too much just simple with one changing picture and easy to access pages.

After seeing the two websites, the study did indeed apply to me. I liked the website that had colorful pictures and text with unposed pictures rather than the nascar website.

Although, Erin M. made a great point. The Glamorgan Study never mentioned whether or not the content on the websites studied was consistent.

Would I like nascar better if the website was hot pink with make-up ads, similiarly would a guy like Lily Pulitzer clothes if the website had straight lines, black text and beer ads?

Also a female nascar nut who likes to dress comfortably would probably hate the clothing website and love the nascar one.

More research would have to be done to find out if the content of a website isn’t what truly drives someone to like it or not.

As far as having male and female versions of a website, I think it depends on the target audience of each specific website.

It is not surprising that men and women see websites differently. This is just one more thing to add to a long list of differences. However, Glamorgan University’s research poses some interesting and legitimate questions for website designers. Not to mention, the organizations represented by these sites.

What is the answer to a more hermaphroditic layout? Perhaps vibrant colors with endless links or black-and-white with informal pictures. This is where the specific organization must become actively involved in researching their target audience. The research will provide answers to help in creating the most viewer friendly website.

There are many issues that can be debated within this study. For example, while searching for an internship I find myself in varying moods. Some days I will come across a site that jumps off the page at me and it is an annoyance. Then, find one with little or no bells and whistles on the opening page and immediately become curious as to why they didn’t try to catch my attention. This motivates me to investigate further into the companyand find out the reasoning behind this. Are they just that good? Do companies do this purposely? This motivational tactic is not necessarily gender specific but it works.

Instead of spending more time researching male vs. female preferences, there would be a greater advantage in researching various personality types and their preferences. Either way, there is much to be considered when creating a successful website. Thank you Tara for bringing this to our attention.

Surprise Surprise is definitely an appropriate title for this post. I wasn’t really shocked by the concept that men and women view websites differently. I’ve learned in some of my communications classes the ways is which men and women communicate differently on even the most basic level. In my opinion, the two topics are very similar. Even the examples in my classes seem to echo the research findings. For example, men respond better to more direct on factual conversation, rather than conversations about feelings. Therefore, I am not surprised that they would prefer the same type of visual stimulation.

Even though the concept of the post didn’t surprise me, I was intrigued by some of the details of the research, specifically that men and women give higher ratings to websites created by their respective genders. Many of my classmates have posted comments questioning how people can know which gender created the website. However, I think that their questions drive the point further. Women like the same sites other women do, and men like websites more suited to masculine tastes. This aspect of the research reminded me of when Auburn’s University Program Council was recreating its website. Our media tech director was a male at the time. I remember once he asked me what I thought about the website. I commented that it needed more color, and he preferred that it remained white with horizontal lines and lots of buttons. Ultimately, to my disappointment, the page remained boring white.

So I say, excellent job to the researchers at Glamorgan for pointing out even more differences in masculine and feminine tastes, and thanks to Tara for bringing this to us.

After reading the article and comments about “Surprise, Surprise: Men and Women View Web Sites Differentlyâ€? I have to admit I was forced to look at how I personally view a website. Something I am ashamed to admit I haven’t done before.

I looked back at a sight I tend to visit with regularity, MSN.com, and found that they incorporate both light and dark colors, tons of links yet lots of organization. I then looked at links like Maxim Magazine and Cosmopolitan Magazine which tend to cater to specific genders and found that each one has its own appeal. Maxim has darker colors, lots of pictures and tons of links. Cosmo on the other hand had bright colors, more organization (straight to the point) and fewer pictures. So this led me to the conclusion that perhaps businesses do well to design to the target audience. Yet those that target both genders can incorporate both design elements without taking a chance at losing its appeal to everyone.

Lets face the facts: Men and Women do communicate differently. (After all men are from Mars and women are from Venus right?) So doesn’t it make sense that we are attracted to different design elements, if in fact design is a method of communication? I read a blog from Molly E. Holzschlag that said:

“That women like circles and men prefer straight lines is no accident. If we look to known archetypes, the circle signifies the feminine and attributes considered to be feminine: curves, community and cooperative communication. The straight line signifies the male not only physically, but in terms of representing focus and linear thought and communication.”

So if this is true then how should websites be designed? Perhaps a happy medium between the two: circles, straight lines, many links but complete organization and a variety of colors will do the trick. I also think it has to appeal to the target audiences mind frame. By that I mean women and men comprehend and process things differently. I probably won’t surf a sight with tons of sports scores regardless of its colors and design elements because it doesn’t interest me.

So I guess overall I feel that maybe websites should be gender specific only if they target a specific gender and the rest should try to use elements that appeal to both. Ultimately I have to agree with the comment from Glamorgan University Business School in Wales that suggests “it’s not just a Web site’s subject or function that determines whether it will draw more men or women. The appearance of the site also might play a subtle role.” Well I agree as long as we take into consideration the use of the words “might play a subtle role”.